The territory guides monitoring
People who live in a territory and know its paths hold highly valuable information: empirical, traditional and ancestral knowledge that comes from observation, daily coexistence and connection with the land.
In biocultural monitoring, that knowledge defines where each camera goes, what is recorded and how the results are interpreted. Technology extends what the community already observes, and the community gives meaning to what the technology records.
Knowledge that comes from the territory
- Behavior of the region's species
- Knowledge about the presence of animals, their behavior, where they roam, whether they have stopped appearing, whether climate and weather have affected their lives, and much more.
- Water, food and shelter
- Waterholes, cenotes, fruiting trees, salt licks and burrows that concentrate wildlife depending on the season.
- Hunting and pressure
- Areas, seasons and species for hunting, fishing and extraction. They help explain why a site has fewer records and where monitoring is most needed.
- Names and stories in Indigenous languages
- How each species is named and classified in the traditional language. This brings cultural heritage closer to scientific results.
What we did in Dzilam
In Dzilam, community leaders from the Chac Mool Group chose and characterized the monitoring sites: they knew where the jaguar crossed and where equipment could withstand flooding. Some, like Juan Castillo, came to know the forest through hunting and ranching, and today use that experience to care for it. They also take part in monthly fieldwork, maintain the equipment and help validate species records.
That knowledge also guides interpretation: a record at a known crossing or an encounter between a jaguar and cattle is read together with the people who live in the territory. A protocol for responding to those encounters was tested with communities and ranchers, and the AI was designed to complement local knowledge.
How to integrate it into sampling
Before installing equipment, present the project at a community assembly and obtain the community's free, prior and informed consent for the monitoring and the use of the data.
Lead guided walks and participatory mapping with elders, hunters, women and young people to locate wildlife crossings, waterholes, hunting areas and sacred sites. Record what is shared in template 5. P5
Combine those sites with a systematic design: stations at comparable distances, across different habitats and with the same sampling effort, so results can be compared.
Include in the field forms what the community observes: tracks, hunting, fishing and wildlife encounters, in addition to camera records.
Review the results with the community using local species names, and decide together whether to move cameras or add sites.
Agree on which knowledge is public and which is protected. Trails, sacred places, hunting sites and locations of sensitive species are shared only with authorization. P2
Lesson learned
Sampling works best when it combines two sources: local knowledge, which points to where wildlife is, and a systematic design, which allows sites and seasons to be compared. Together they produce reliable data that the community recognizes as its own.
Tools to get started
- Principios CREA para la gobernanza de datos indígenas (opens in a new tab) (GIDA, Spanish version of the CARE Principles).
- BIOCOMUNI v2.0 Fauna (opens in a new tab) (FMCN and CONAFOR, in Spanish), a community monitoring protocol with printable forms.
- Buenas prácticas para generalizar datos de especies sensibles (opens in a new tab) (GBIF, in Spanish).
- Directrices de la UICN sobre conflictos y coexistencia entre humanos y vida silvestre (opens in a new tab) (2024, in Spanish).
- KoboToolbox (opens in a new tab) and SMART (opens in a new tab), to record community observations offline.
- Introducción al monitoreo ambiental comunitario (opens in a new tab) (Forest Peoples Programme, in Spanish), a guide to designing monitoring with the community.
- Camera trap monitoring protocol (opens in a new tab) (TEAM Network), for the scientific sampling design.
- Template 5 of this toolkit: territory knowledge map. P5
Jaguar Biocultural Strategy, Ecuadorian Amazon
The Achuar community of Sharamentsa has monitored its territory since 2021 with support from Fundación Pachamama. The Jaguar Biocultural Strategy, led by the Sacred Headwaters Alliance and Fundación Pachamama together with the community, and supported by NaturaTech LAC (IDB Lab and C Minds) and Regen Network, extended the model to the communities of Wayusentsa, Tsekuntsa, Shuinmamus and Kapawi.
The system brings together camera traps, AI analysis, digital forms and traditional knowledge about jaguar behavior, so that each source validates the other. The forms also record hunting, fishing and resource use, and species keep their names in the community's own language. The community decides what information is shared: trails, sacred places and resource locations are safeguarded under agreements with Fundación Pachamama.
As of May 2025, the strategy had 21 trained community monitors, 33,700 ha under monitoring and 58 species recorded with camera traps, including 14 jaguar records. The Jaguar Biocultural Credits channel resources toward the priorities the community defines.
See the Jaguar Biocultural Strategy (NaturaTech LAC) (opens in a new tab)